ABSTRACT
The history of speculation on the nature of man is chaotic. The Renaissance was a rebellion against the authority of the Church and a revival of the Apollonian world-view. In the eighteenth century, then, the Apollonian view was triumphant, and psychology, the theory of the nature of man, conformed to the prevailing intellectualism. The predominant philosophies of the modern period have run on two parallel courses, both Apollonian, typified by the positivist and mechanist naturalism of Comte and Spencer and the pure intellectualism of the idealists. In Germany there was a brief outburst of Dionysian thinking in the nature philosophers. In the persons of Oken and Schelling it ran amok, brought disrepute upon itself, and was utterly repudiated by all the academic thinkers. In the middle of the century came the beginnings of the present Dionysian revival in philosophy and psychology.
